Beware those who claim to have ‘found the key’

At the Perth Writers Festival many years ago I went to a talk by an author of a very well-known autobiography. He came across as a bit of a demagogue. Confident and charismatic, he told us he’d been a criminal spurned by his own society until he was embraced by the poorest of the poor. He saw the light, and now spends his time helping other downtrodden folk. The vibe of his talk was – I found the key – in a very profound sort of way – and now I am here to bring you with me. His story was colourful and appealing in its biblical simplicity. But his energy was overpowering, and a little intimidating.

Profound transformational experiences can happen, and there’s nothing to say he didn’t have one. But there are reasons to be suspicious of people who think they’ve found the key and are very confident about it. Particularly where the transformation has happened very quickly and radically – they were lost and now they’re found – and they are very attached to the particular thing that ‘saved’ them, such as eastern religion or martial arts or a particular diet. Then the next minute they’re self-mutilating, having a nervous breakdown etc. They’re still on the journey.

Literary nature descriptions

I’ve always hated literary descriptions of landscape and nature, and particularly those that present nature as metaphor for emotion. I realised this at my Albany high school where we were force-fed Tim Winton (a sunset and an ocean convey a thousand words….). Not only does nature description bore me, but I’m not a very spatial person, so I find it difficult to position all the physical things in my mind, to compose an image. I’ve always felt a bit ashamed about this, like I’m missing some vital ecological sensibility. I’ll read the passages over and over, struggling to absorb meaning, but just end up staring into space. I rewrite the passages in my head: ‘They went down to the beach. It was quiet. There was a nice sunset.’

Experiencing concussion

In the days after leaving the hospital, I realised that the location of the lump and scratch on my head suggested that it had hit the road, not just my bike. This would explain why I felt like I’d been smashed in the head with an iron gatepost. The doctor predicted I’d be back at work in a week, but my body was telling me something different. My sense was that I’d taken a major blow to the system, and it could take a while to resolve.

Probably the scariest of my symptoms was the thinking problems. It felt like my mind was covered in a shroud of fog. That was how I pictured it at the time. Through this image, I tried to work out what was happening. Was it that everything was still there, but the fog was preventing me from accessing it? Or was it that behind the fog, something had something fundamentally changed?

Not many thoughts came into my head in a day. Those that did seemed blurry, hard to hold onto and difficult to structure. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read or watch movies. I was also extremely physically fatigued, making it an effort to do everyday things like feeding myself, particularly when it involved a trip to the supermarket.

My senses were on high alert. I was suddenly aware of sounds like my shoes hitting the ground  as I walked, the crackling of a chip packet, or a drawer opening and closing. The outside world was even more overwhelming. Sunlight felt like a massive search beam on my face. Traffic noises were unbearable.

While things got slightly better over the weeks, I remained very vague and tired for a good few months. More than that, it was like I was stuck in a bad dream, one of those dreams where you can only move in slow motion. I could still do the things I normally enjoy – going for coffees with friends, a tiny bit of reading – but nothing felt the same. Everything had to pass through the filter of the brain injury, and came out tasting like dishwater.

I was lucid from the moment of my accident, and wasn’t really confused, so people couldn’t really tell the difference. ‘It seems just like you’re hungover, or having a bad day’, my friends said. ‘You’re still good company’. I don’t know whether this made me feel better or worse. While being with friends was comforting, it also felt like I was acting a lot of the time, going through the motions of my old personality.

I sometimes get strong instincts or premonitions; they feel like a bodily truth. Over time, I have come to realise that they often turn out to be wrong. But I still find it hard to shake them off no matter how much sensible evidence that others present to the contrary. They may seem like the sensible ones now, I think, but time will prove them wrong. I know it deep down.

In this case, my instinct was that I had really fucked things up this time; that life had finally decided to make me pay for my careless, smug behaviour. The irony of staunch opponent to helmet laws ending up with a permanent brain injury, preventable by wearing a helmet, had some kind of compelling storybook logic, even if the doctor’s prognosis suggested otherwise.

Fantasies about a male nurse

Unlike the other hospital staff, the male cyclist nurse seemed to sense how scared I was. He’d constantly check in to see how I was, telling I was doing OK and there weren’t any danger signs. He chatted to me about normal things like jobs and hobbies. I confessed that I was a bit dissatisfied with my job. He said he loved his, which didn’t surprise me at all. When he left the room, I would jokingly refer to him as ‘MY nurse’ to my friend.

In the weeks after leaving the hospital, I sometimes thought about that nurse. This particular fantasy saw him somehow getting my number and coming over to stroke my hair, rearrange the pillows and bring food. I vaguely contemplated whether love could be based on one person being extremely attractive and caring, even if you had little in common. But I also couldn’t help imagining the cracks that would appear once the crisis was over.

At the hospital, the X-ray showed no spinal injury or elbow fracture (I couldn’t bend my arm), and they weren’t too worried about my head either. I was sent home with a fact sheet on head injury, a print-out from the Victorian Government Better Health Channel, and instructions not to stay alone that night. That was all they told me about what to expect. I was to run into my nurse friend again in a few weeks, under slightly embarrassing circumstances.

Part of our job is education

About three months ago I fell off my bike and hit my head. It was a beautiful balmy Friday evening on bike-friendly Rae Street. I left the house at the time that I was actually meant to meet my friend, putting me 20 minutes in the red. I was accelerating hard, thinking, I bet I can make it from Fitzroy to Brunswick East in 15 minutes, then I’ll only be 15 minutes late, which is socially acceptable! Shortly afterwards I lost my balance and rocketed through the air, landing first on my ribs and winding myself. I thought, I’m falling hard. This seems like the worst fall I’ve had. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. At the end my bike fell onto my head. It all seemed to unfold in slow motion. I can even remember the shocked faces of bystanders watching me tumble, which must surely be an invented memory.

Everyone was out on the street because it was such a beautiful night, and because Rae Street is so pleasant. Kind people gathered around, shielding me from oncoming traffic, untangling my hair from my bike. The neighbours Phil and Jean invited me into their house but I couldn’t move, so sat there on the curb. ‘Did you hit your head?’ a man asked. ‘Yeah, my bike hit my head but not very hard.’ His gorgeous little kid was right in front of my face, staring at me. Then the kid’s face started going blurry and I felt myself losing consciousness.

Could this be dying? I wondered. Seeing as there were no obvious wounds I had no idea why I’d be dying. Maybe internal bleeding? So this is how it can happen, I thought, shocked. A dumb, mundane mistake and your whole life, that felt so big and important to you at the time, is easily obliterated. And you can’t reverse it. For some reason the death scene from the movie Margaret came into my head. The dying actor is CJ Cregg from the West Wing so you feel like you know her, making her death especially unbelievable and tragic.

I got up on my haunches in an attempt to regain a grip on the world, and it helped. My vision gradually came back but I still felt like I was swimming in the world; my head was soupy and everything excessively bright. I wasn’t sure how this was all going to turn out. There was this sour, metallic taste in my mouth. I thought maybe it was blood from internal bleeding but the neighbour, Phil said it was probably just concussion – he played rugby so he knew. Phil and Jean helped me into their house and offered to drive me to emergency. At first I refused but then agreed, figuring that the human race is definitely screwed if you can’t accept favours at times like this (I was to need – and actively seek – many such favours over the following few months).

‘The injured person needs to sit in the front seat,’ said Jean. ‘That’s the one thing I remember from school.’ We drove a kilometre to St Vinnies emergency. My friend was with me by that stage. In the waiting room, he tried to cheer me up by explaining the plot of the movie playing overhead. I pretended to be entertained but actually couldn’t follow what he was saying. Neither of us had eaten dinner so my friend bought me some hot chocolate and chips from the vending machine, and we shared them. I googled concussion on my phone.

The triage nurse, when we finally got to see her, was reading a magazine, chewing gum and looking bored.

‘Were you wearing a helmet?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She looked annoyed. ‘You should always wear your helmet,’ she said. ‘If you were wearing a helmet, you wouldn’t be here.’

‘That doesn’t help me much now,’ I said mildly.

‘Well part of our job is education,’ she said with a sense of importance.

‘Is it really the right time for education?’ I asked, bewildered.

After about ten minutes they took me into the emergency room, where the nurses, young girls, asked lots of questions, like what year it was, and how old I was, and of course, whether I had been wearing a helmet. They looked at each other, worried. ‘I don’t know, she seems a bit confused. I think we might need to collar her.’ I remember thinking they seemed really sweet in their worry. Then I was collared and forced to lie down while I waited for them to X-ray my spine.

A male nurse, about my age, asked me about the accident, did some tests and felt my head for damage. ‘Hmm…there doesn’t seem to be any blood, but can’t really see much with all that hair.’ His arms were lean, muscly and tattooed. He said he was a cyclist too. ‘Please don’t lecture me about not wearing a helmet!’ I pleaded. ‘I don’t really think that’s my job!’ he said. Then he left me for a moment, giving my feet this little pat before he left the room.

While we waited, my friend, sitting at the side of the bed, looked at Linus bikes on his smartphone. He showed me an image. ‘I know this is kind of a weird time,’ he said, ‘but what do you think about this one?’

Everybody needs good NEIGHBAs

I just moved into a new house. It’s night-time, I’m home alone and there’s a knock on the door, I’m like ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s ya NEIGHBA.’ A grunty male voice with an accent.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know you, I’m new. How can I help?’

‘It’s ya NEIGHBA.’

‘What would you like?’

‘I got somefing for ya!’

‘What is it?’

(slightly louder) ‘Open up! I got somefing FOR ya!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m home alone and I haven’t met you before.’

I feel extremely rude but have this story running in my head about a guy who’d pretend to be there to check your smoke alarms but then would come in and … I can’t even remember.  I shouldn’t really let him in.

‘But I got somefing FOR ya!’

‘What is it? Can you come back in an hour or so when the other tenants are home?’

‘God. FUCK!’

At this stage for some reason I realise it’s OK and open the door, only to see him storming back into the house next door.

I ring the doorbell, hearing cursing at the back of his house. I’m hoping like anything they won’t ignore me, because that’d make me feel awful for the rest of the night.

Then a lovely older woman comes and opens the door, presenting me with an alfoil-covered plate. ‘We make you something for Easter.’

‘Please say sorry to your son. I just didn’t want to answer the door because I was home alone and I didn’t really know who you guys were.’

‘It’s OK, ‘ she says, smiling kindly. ‘We meet now.’ I give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thankyou so much.’

I unwrap it when I get home.

The benevolent dad-dude vibe

Soon as the smoke alarm guy walked in the door I could tell it was this going to be this gendered father-daughter dynamic. Same vibe as with those friendly old bus drivers who call you ‘love’ and can get away with it. I don’t mind that kind of thing sometimes.

He asked why I was off work and I told him about my bike accident. He was quite kind, he told me ‘You’ll be alright, it’ll just take time. But be careful, it’s a jungle out there. There are bad motorists, there are bad cyclists. Everyone needs to watch out. ‘ He told me some story about what happened on the Nepean Highway but I wasn’t really listening.

‘You need to get trainer wheels now,’ he joked, which I actually found quite funny. So of course he repeated the gag as he left, ‘Don’t forget your trainer wheels next time!’

It’s funny, a recently ex-flame said a similar thing to me shortly after my accident (‘don’t forget your helmet next time’) and it was one of the grounds for divorce. I guess benevolent Dad-type dudes can get away with a bit.

Bin wars

‘HEY! What do you think you’re doing! That’s MY bin!’ my neighbour screamed and charged out of his house from the opposite side of the road. It was as if he had just been waiting for this to happen.

He was emanating an intense energy force. A red-faced middle-aged man with a thick neck. I stopped where I was standing in the middle of the road.

‘It was empty!’ I protested. ‘What’s the problem? We’re moving house at the moment so we’ve got a lot of stuff; we’re just trying to get rid of it.’

I had made the mistake of putting my rubbish in his bin. It was bin night and the bins were already out on the verge, so I didn’t think it’d be a problem.

‘LOOK it’s not even closed properly. GOD! The rubbish man will just spill the stuff out onto the verge!’ It’s true that the bin lid was ajar a little, but everything fit in.

‘TAKE IT OUT!’ he screamed again. ‘Fine’, I said, and walked over to take it out.

This didn’t placate him, ‘IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE IN THERE?’ he screamed again. I didn’t answer, so he ran over to look. ‘ORR!’ he said. ‘There’s ANOTHER one in here. TAKE IT OUT!’

‘No’, I said. Sometimes when I’m pushed to a certain point I get like that. Survival-wise it’s probably maladaptive.

He moved towards me. I had no idea what was going to happen. But after taking a few steps he stopped and screamed, ‘I’m going to report you to the council!’ This was not what I had expected.

‘Go ahead, see how much they care’, I said. He continued yelling at me while I retreated to my house. ‘Don’t you have any bigger problems?’ I said.

I went inside and locked the doors. From inside I hear him screaming at my Italian neighbour George, who had probably come out to see what was going on, ‘She put her rubbish in MY bin!’ George was making sympathetic noises but it was hard to assess his attitude to my bin invasion. By the time I opened the door to peek through the flyscreen at what was going on, George was walking decisively back to his door.

In bed that night, home alone, the guy was on my mind. Maybe he was just so angry he wanted to hurt somebody. Maybe he was in his house, brooding, thinking of ways to get back at me. Hatching a plan to break into my house. Maybe he didn’t like it when people defied his wishes.

I couldn’t sleep. The possums and wind were creating suspicious noises. I was imagining my neighbour creeping around the house, with crazy eyes and malicious intent. I rang Dad.

I told him the story and said I just needed someone to reassure me that the guy wasn’t going to break into my house and get violent. Dad said it was OK, that some people are just highly protective of their property; he’d met a lot of people like that in his life. He said the guy seemed unhinged, but the chances he’d get violent were low.

I said that all the murder stories recently had affected my psyche. The realisation that you never know what people are capable of.

‘I know it’s easy to get freaked out if you read the paper in Melbourne these days, but you have to remember that it’s a big world, and the chances of something happening to you are actually quite low’, he soothed.

But he cautioned me not to add fuel to the fire. ‘I’ve learnt to let it wash over me, just apologise profusely and back away.’

I was really wishing I’d done that.

You mean like The Secret?

I am on the train assessing a young girl across the aisle with curly black hair, flowery dress and noise ring. The fashion’s supposed to be ‘alternative’, yet the boho look is anything but original in these parts. I had some variation of boho fashion from law school through to my late 20s. She pulls it off better than me.

Sitting opposite the girl is a homeless guy wearing beanie, tracksuit and joggers. Well I’ve assumed he’s homeless, but there’s no real evidence.

The two are in conversation. At first I’m too tired to listen, but then their words start hitting my ears.

‘So what do you do?’ she asks warmly, leaning in.

‘I’m unemployed’, he says matter of factly.

She smiles and tries again. ‘So what would you like to do?’

‘Just, you know, get a job, that’s be nice’, he says politely.

‘OK, what did you do before?’

‘I was a gardener.’

‘Well that’s great!’ she says brightly. ‘Everyone likes gardeners.’

‘No, not really, they only love landscape gardeners. I wanted to be a landscape gardener when I was growing up.’

She leans forward. ‘You should do it. You can create your own reality.’

‘What, you mean like The Secret?’

‘No, not like The Secret, it’s more like…’ At this stage I fade out for some reason.

When I return she’s declaring, ‘I’m on a journey. I’m trying to look after myself. Otherwise I can’t be there for other people.’

‘Or with them, you mean’, he says sympathetically.

I wonder what the difference is.

‘Where do you live?’ he asks.

‘In an apartment. It’s really nice. I don’t get to spend much time there though cos I’m always working.’

‘Oh, is it one of those ones surrounded by trees?’

‘There’s a courtyard. It’s actually really nice.’

I imagine a small leafy courtyard with bricks walls and vines. Then I imagine him imagining it.

‘We work too much in this culture,’ she says. ‘I went to Fiji last year. People work only a little, go fishing, but mainly it’s just fun. You know in my life, I work to live. Work and life are separate. But they’re like…life…life…work.’

This strikes me as an interesting choice of theme considering she’s talking to a job seeker.

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean, that’d be pretty nice.’

‘Yeah.’

He seems unimpressed, but maybe he’s just validating her, as you do in polite conversation.

There’s a pause, then she asks, ‘Can I come and sit with you?

‘Yeah.’

She comes over to him but first has to wait for him to move his KFC wrapper.

Then she sits down and continues. ‘My friend went diving off New Zealand. She showed me some pictures. It was beautiful – tortoises, sharks, etc.’

‘That’d be orright.’ He sounds enthusiastic. ‘I’ve got my scuba licence, I’ve been diving with sharks.’

This surprises me.

‘I saw her photos on Facebook. They were amazing’, she says. ‘Do you know what Facebook is?’

‘No.’

Surely he does, I think. Maybe he didn’t hear properly, or he’s bluffing.

‘It’s this place where you can put up photos, see your friend’s photos, put up your status and stuff.’

‘Orright.’

She reaches her stop. ‘This is me!’

‘See you later, nice to meet you!’ he says.

She squeezes him on the shoulder as she leaves, which makes me cringe.

Does she congratulate herself for speaking to people normally and as equals, even though they’re homeless or otherwise complex? Does she walk away feeling a bit shiny?

But I’m projecting onto this poor girl because she reminds of my own faux-altruism. Maybe she just likes talking to people on the tram. And he seemed to enjoy it.

The train pulls into at Flinders Street Station. As it waits, a friend of the homeless guy boards and they briefly confer. ‘I don’t want to go to Epping!’ announces the homeless guy rather loudly, and they disembark.

I watch them through my window as the train rolls away. They sit together on the concrete platform, backs against the wall. The friend is slouched down, face deep in his hoodie. The homeless guy is smoking a cigarette, quick sharp puffs, and jiggling something in his pocket.

Talking to police

Met by silence I dug deeper

I approached one of Melbourne’s bike police at a community workshop about cycling, thinking it’d be interesting to get his perspective, without considering what we might talk about. Maybe I thought I’d be able to convince him that punishing cyclists for failing to wear a helmet or running red lights wasn’t the most effective way to reduce the road toll. I’ve always thought of myself as the kind of person who could talk to policeman. 

The policeman was young and lean. He was enmired in a conversation with one of my inspired but intense bike friends, who was telling him about his campaign, Drive to Work Day. Drive To Work Day is a national day where all cyclists take to their cars, to show how bikes help reduce congestion. I’m not that into it as a campaign idea; I find the idea a bit negative.

As I walked up to them the friend introduced me. ‘This is ____ , he’s a legend! He’s actually a cyclist. You may have seen him at the Zero Budget rally.’ We had an easy conversation about the Zero Budget  (zero money for bikes in the state budget) – the policeman agreed it was bad. I didn’t find out whether he was at the rally as an individual or on duty.

Then my friend was like, ‘So, you gonna join me on Drive To Work Day by running Bikes On Strike?’ In response to the Zero Budget, the idea of Bikes On Strikes had come up, where cyclists take to public transport with their helmets or placards or something. My friend thought we could run them in tandem.

The policeman seemed uncomprehending and possibly wary, and for some reason I felt a bit embarrassed, thinking that these ideas must seem ridiculous to him, and he probably thinks we’re a bit fringe and nutty. I tried to explain the logic behind Drive To Work, but the policeman didn’t give me any validating signs so I quickly abandoned the thread.

‘Anyway, what do you guys get up to?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know, enforcement. We have periodic campaigns.’

‘Oh yeah, you mean, like Operation Halo.’

I couldn’t think of anything good to say about Operation Halo, which seemed to me to be more about blaming vulnerable road users than protecting them, so I popped out this one: ‘I’ve always wondered if I could outrun the police if they tried to catch me.’ I kind of thought it was going to be this jokey tension-reliever, as it would have been if I was talking to my friends.

No response, so I explained further. ‘Yeah, like in a stand off between me and the police, would I win.’

He gave me a look best interpreted as disbelief at my stupidity. ‘Really. Yeah, there are a few people that do that.’

‘Of course I’d never to do it,’ I quickly clarified.

Met by silence, I dug deeper. ‘I mean, it’s just a fantasy.’

In my social interactions I work off this theory, which I’ve never really interrogated, that awkwardness can be overcome by sharing an honest story, particularly an embarrassing, self-deprecating one, and that if you just be yourself, people will like you. As I get older I’m realising this theory is fundamentally flawed as it rests on an assumption that others think similarly to you. I’m not sure why it’s taken nearly 30 years to work this out.

Me: ‘So……what issues are you working on right now?’

Him: ‘Well, cyclists without lights is becoming an increasing problem.’

I wasn’t sure what to say. I think focusing on cyclists’ personal responsibility is misguided as a safety strategy,  but fair enough, riding without lights is dodgy.

My friend declared that he never rides without lights, and in fact, that’s why he was walking home tonight.

The policeman told us: ‘Believe it or not I’ve seen some cyclists riding along, no lights, wearing all black!’ He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Oh, I ride without lights sometimes,’ I revealed stupidly, in reflexive defence of the cyclists so roundly condemned as irresponsible.

The policeman and my friend both looked at me in surprise. I pedalled backwards, adopting a low, calm voice. ‘Oh you know, sometimes when you get stuck out at night, and your light goes flat, you don’t want to leave your bike in the city so you have to ride home. I mean…on the footpath…slowly.’

‘Fair enough, that’s a different thing then,’ said the young policeman.

Who brought this uni student? 

After the meet and greet was over, we did some activities where we rotated tables and swapped ideas. As it turned out I spent a lot of time on tables with police.

I quickly realised how far apart our ideas were. One policeman said that if you take road space away from motorists by putting in a bike lane, you have to give them something back. I decided to leave that comment, so I never really found out what he thought it would mean in practice to give something back – new roads, perhaps?

At another table, a cyclist put forward the idea of making some of the major roads ie William, Elizabeth, one-way, as in some European cities.

One of the policeman was like, ‘You can’t have that, it’ll just throw the traffic into chaos.’

Without knowing much about the actual proposal, I chipped in: ‘Chaos is not always a bad thing.’

‘Really?’ he said, sounding doubtful.

‘No. If you have unpredictability in the urban environment, people are like, what’s going on here, and they slow down and exercise more care. That’s good for cyclists. Whereas if you have certainty, people think they can just hoon up the road without looking.’

He wasn’t impolite, but looked a little incredulous, perhaps thinking who brought this uni student?  For a moment I felt like maybe he was the face of commonsense, and I was really just living in fairyland.

People have a right to get to work safely by some means of transport

Another policeman commented, ‘I’ll tell you one thing I disagree with that’s been said here. We can’t make Melbourne a cycling city in four years. We CAN make it a city safe for cycling. Understand my distinction here?’

Another cycling friend, who has this kind of slippery way of talking sometimes, says, ‘Oh, great, well that’s what we want too, so it sounds like we’re on the same page. We want to make Melbourne a city safe for bikes too. Actually, that will probably involve making it a cycling city though.’

I tried to explain to him how making something a cycling city could actually make it safer for cyclists. I told him that cars treated me more respectfully on Canning Street than, say, Arthurton Road, where motorists were like, what the hell are you doing here, get off the road!

Or how, on Spring Street, I refuse to ride in the bike lane, a narrow painted lanebuilt alongside car doors, and instead ride in the middle of the traffic lane, but motorists often beep and gesticulate for me to ‘Get in the bike lane!’

‘What I am saying is that if you legitimise cyclists through the urban environment, motorists will be more careful and respectful too, and they’ll be safer.’ He seemed to have some sympathy for this view.

‘See the thing is, Melbourne’s always going to be a car city. We’ve never going to be Europe. We’re closer to America. We’ve got a very strong car culture. But there need to be safe avenues for cyclists. I think cyclists have the right to have safe avenues to their workplace.’

Me: ‘Yes, people have a human right to ride on the roads without fear of being killed.’

He hesitated, seeming unsure of this characterisation of the principle.’Well…yes, in a way. People have a right to get to work safety by some means of transport.’